I’m completely shocked and overwhelmed by how much I loved this book. Sports romance is my favorite trope, I looooove a good sports romance. But this story took sports and blended it with a couple of really important topics in our world today: bullying and eating disorders. Yes, our heroine has a eating disorder. It’s apparent from the way she views food in general, not just in the fact that she counts every single calorie down to a T. She’s constantly calculating to determine how much she needs to burn off in order to eat things such as apples or protein bars. It’s heartbreaking and I think there definitely should have been more of a focus on her recovery in the novel. Thankfully, when she starts dating our leading man, Oakley, she starts to view food differently and is able to eat without so much regret underneath. You see, our heroine, Amanda, used to have a drinking problem. With that came the drunchies (drunk munchies) and that had her gaining weight. I wouldn’t call her fat, like she enjoys calling herself throughout the novel, I’d say she probably looked a little heavy. We know she’s lost about forty pounds when our novel begins and we know she looks awfully thin because her parents remark about it. Anyway, so yes, she transferred to a new school (The University of Texas to be exact, Hook ‘Em) after an incident at her last college in CA had her running for the hills. She often thinks back on her time in CA remembering how much she loved to party. She comments on how partying was a way to cover up her insecurities but it really only made things worse for her.

Amanda is an interesting character, she’s strong and put together, has her head on her shoulders and knows what she wants, but a very large part of me wonders how much of that is really her and how much of it is overcompensation for who she used to be. She’s so afraid of slipping that she doesn’t allow herself to have any alcohol, eat anything that might have any amount of calories, and she’s afraid of love. That’s the biggest one. When she gets assigned as the PR agent for Oakley, to help reform his playboy, partier image, she finds she can’t stop thinking about him. Part of me wonders if it was love at first sight for her but she kept it under wraps. I know it took Oakley some time to come around, but once he did? Boy, he was in it to win it. 

This novel was written solely from Amanda’s perspective, so we never got a glimpse into Oakley’s mind which was disappointing. I wanted to know his thoughts on her eating disorder, which was just kind of left out there with no resolution. I also wanted to be able to watch him fall in love with her, it could have been really interesting. Anyway, I still loved this book so much. It was unique and special and had me furiously flipping pages. I couldn’t get enough. 4 stars!! P.S. I loved it so much that I didn’t even take the time to write down any quotes!